MANILA, Philippines — The Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO) posted a banner year in 2023, with total gaming revenues reaching a post-pandemic high P61.45 billion.
PCSO general manager and vice chairman of the board Melquiades Robles said yesterday that their intensified efforts to maximize government revenues from lotto and other digit games as well as the small town lottery games bore fruit last year. Lotto and STL games pulled in revenues of P31.37 billion and P29.73 billion, respectively.
The Instant Sweepstakes drew in P344.24 million in revenue.
The 2023 revenue represents a seven-percent increase from the PCSO’s total gaming revenue in 2022 of P57.467 billion.
In 2022, the PCSO’s lotto games earned P27.91 billion; STL, P28.42 billion; the discontinued Keno games, P54.46 billion, and P1.06 billion from the Instant Sweepstakes games.
“We increased our total revenues year-on-year by about P4 billion,” Robles told The STAR.
Robles noted that the P61.45 billion in total gaming revenues for 2023 reflected a return to the high pre-pandemic revenues, being almost 40 percent higher than the pre-pandemic year 2019’s total gaming revenues of P44.02 billion.
This reflects the full recovery of the PCSO’s gaming operations and the profitability of the lotto and STL games in the post-pandemic environment.
The record highest revenue posted by the PCSO was P63.55 billion in 2018. This record-high revenue was attributed to the highest lotto jackpot amount of P1.18 billion won by two bettors.
This was followed by a record drop in gaming revenues in 2019 when lotto and STL games were suspended by then president Rodrigo Duterte.